We Can’t Offshore Our Pollution to China Anymore – It’s Coming For Us

A common refrain among conservatives regarding pollution produced by American companies is, “Let China deal with it”. Apparently, the prevailing opinion is that if Chinese people need work and Americans are giving it to them, they should be grateful for it regardless of the fact that we’re only adding to the air quality problem in this heavily populated country. A staggering 300,000 to 400,000 Chinese die prematurely each and every year due to the effects of outdoor air pollution, but that doesn’t change the minds of global warming deniers who refuse to take any culpability for the problem. The thing is, folks, that pollution isn’t going to stay in China: it’s starting to march toward the skylines of Californians.

From The New York Times:

In short, roughly as many Chinese die every two months from the air as were killed in the earthquake. And the problem is becoming international: just as Californians can find Chinese-made shoes in their stores, they can now find Chinese-made haze in their skies.

This summer’s Beijing Olympics will showcase the most remarkable economic explosion in history, and also some of the world’s thickest pollution in both air and water. So I’ve returned to the Yellow River in western China’s Gansu Province to an isolated village that has haunted me since I saw it a decade ago.

Badui is known locally as the “village of dunces.” That’s because of the large number of mentally retarded people here — as well as the profusion of birth defects, skin rashes and physical deformities. Residents are sure that the problems result from a nearby fertilizer factory dumping effluent that taints their drinking water.

None of this is surprising: rural China is full of “cancer villages” caused by pollution from factories. Beijing’s air sometimes has a particulate concentration that is four times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization.

If you’re truly naïve enough to think that this problem is never going to reach America, you’ve got some growing up to do – or perhaps you just need a reality check to shake you out of your greed-induced fog. There is no hiding from this problem. America is not protected by a magic bubble put there by Jesus to protect bible-thumping conservatives who believe the world owes them something. You shake your fists at realists who can see these problems coming, literally, from miles away and yet your precious ‘American lifestyle’ is going to be the undoing of us all. We can’t offshore our pollution to China anymore. It’s coming for us.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: ABC News/Reuters

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